Marketing Teams are the New First Responders

By Jen Burns on March 31, 2014

As more and more breaches occur, I’ve become a bit more concerned about “my data.” And as I was browsing this A.M., I found an article on preparing for a data breach and what a company today is expected to do when one arises.Data Breach Epicenter

Not surprisingly, the marketing team is considered to be at the epicenter of a data breach. Why? Traditional marketers dealt with direct mailers, business cards, advertisements, etc. Today’s marketers deal with data; data for emails, data for leads, purchase data and even data for website analytics. So, when a breach of data is completed (hacked) it’s not only the ops, IT and executive team that is involved, it’s also marketing. Marketing is at the epicenter because they are the face of the company. They must work quickly to message the breach to their customers via direct mail (depending on the organization) via email to their lists and quickly conduct proactive efforts everywhere their customer is and may comment, rant or file a ticket.

If you’re curious what else you should know about data breaches, this article from Retail Online Integration has some good information. Even companies with the most stringent security practices won’t serve as 100% protection against hackers and so it’s important to create a well-designed plan to execute if this should ever happen to yours. I’ve always believed that the best way to deal with a problem, especially as a marketer, is to get in front of it before it creates a “path” of it’s own.